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Oh thou token loved of joys now perish'd

That I still wear from my neck suspended,
Art thou stronger than our spirit-bond so cherish'd?

Or canst thou prolong love's days untimely ended?
...

Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!
Give answer by thy voice, the sea-fowls' screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?...

Fair Lady! can I sing of flowers
That in Madeira bloom and fade,
I who ne'er sate within their bowers,
Nor through their sunny lawns have strayed?
How they in sprightly dance are worn...

Take these flowers which, purple waving,
On the ruin'd rampart grew,
Where, the sons of freedom braving,
Rome's imperial standards flew.

Warriors from the breach of danger...

("Dans les vieilles for'ts.")

[X., April 20, 1837.]


Through ancient forests - where like flowing tide
The rising sap shoots vigor far and wide,
Mounting the column of the alder dark...

Italian bold, why wilt thou never cease
The fathers from their tombs to summon forth?
Why bring them, with this dead age to converse,
That stifled is by enemies and by sloth?...

Did he who drew her in the years ago -
Till now conceived creator of her grace -
With telescopic sight high natures know,
Discern remote in Time's untravelled space
...

Oh flower-sweet face and bended flower-like head!
Oh violet whose purple cannot pale,
Or forest fragrance ever faint or fail,
Or breath and beauty pass among the dead!
Yea, very truly has the poet said,...

Francesca's life that was a limpid flame
Agleam against the shimmer of a sword,
Which falling, quenched the flame in blood outpoured
To free the house of Rimino from shame,...

I would not venture to dispraise or praise.
Too well I know the indifference which bounds
A poet in the narrow working-grounds
Where he is blind and deaf in all his ways.
...

You call authority "a grievous thing."
With careless hands you snap the leading string,
And, for a frolic (so it seems to you),
Put off the old love, and put on the new.
...

Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay,
And at my casement sing,
Though it should prove a farewell lay
And this our parting spring.

Though I, alas! may ne'er enjoy
The promise in thy song;...

Sweet bottle-shaped flower of lushy red,
Born when the summer wakes her warmest breeze,
Among the meadow's waving grasses spread,
Or 'neath the shade of hedge or clumping trees,...

Pale girl with russet hair,
Tatters in what you wear
Show us your poverty
And your beauty,

For me, poor poet, in
The frail and freckled skin
Of your young flesh
Is a sweetness.
...

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few,
But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you,
Man's fundamental life: if to despise
The barren optimistic sophistries...

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few,
But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you,
Man's fundamental life: if to despise
The barren optimistic sophistries...

Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that prowl
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud,
France, fam'd in all great arts, in none supreme....

Call me no more, O gentle stream,
To wander through thy sunny dream,
No more to lean at twilight cool
Above thy weir and glimmering pool.

Surely I know thy hoary dawns,...

Tha bonny little pooasy! aw'm inclined
To tak thee wi' me:
But yet aw think if tha could spaik thi mind,
Tha'd ne'er forgie me;
For i' mi jacket button-hoil tha'd quickly dee,...

O rose! forbear to flaunt yourself,
All bloom and dew -
I once, sad-hearted as I am,
Was young as you.

But, one by one, the petals fell
Earthward to rot;
Only a berry testifies...